The Carbon Hoofprint

A closer look at the indictment of the livestock industry
By Austin Gelder | World Ark Associate Editor,
and Lauren Wilcox | World Ark Contributor

A recent report from the United Nations contained a stunning statistic: One industry is responsible for nearly 20 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere worldwide. It isn’t long-haul trucking, or air travel, or steel-smelting factories, or any of the other exhaust-belching suspects usually associated with environmental woes.

It is the livestock industry.

In “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” released in 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported that raising and processing cattle, hogs, poultry and other animals produces 18 percent of greenhouse gases; just 13 percent comes from trucks, cars and other transportation. And greenhouse gases—those produced directly by animals, and indirectly through the need to transport grain and meat—are only part of the problem.

The livestock industry’s transgressions include the deforestation of grazing land, the pollution of air and groundwater from animal waste, the excessive use of water to raise grain for feed and its threat on biodiversity. Livestock—and the world’s rising demand for meat—contribute in many ways, the report stated, to global warming and the general deterioration of the environment.

And yet, the report also points out that the production of livestock has enormous economic importance. Besides being big business at the industrial level, it is a crucial source of income and a means of survival for vast numbers—nearly a billion—of the world’s poor, for whom it is the only livelihood available.

To begin to reduce the impact of livestock on the environment is to untangle a particularly knotty ball of twine. As the FAO points out, the issue is bound up with food supply, food safety and poverty reduction, creating an extraordinarily complex problem (the report ran to 400 pages). A solution is hardly as simple as condemning big business’s practices or turning a blind eye to the minor blunders of struggling small farmers.

Where, then, to begin?

The Carbon Hoofprint

The Problems of Livestock Production

First, the issue demands a look at the specific problems associated with livestock production. The report breaks them into four categories: land, air, water and biodiversity. According to the latest statistics, the livestock industry occupies about 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land surface. This number, which includes land occupied by animals as well as land devoted to raising their feed, has risen sharply over the last 50 years and continues to increase. Land is also being used more intensively, with less time to recover from grazing and crops, and this contributes to desertification and the displacement of wildlife.

As for air pollution, due to their digestive process, livestock release what the report calls “considerable amounts” of three greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Methane and nitrous oxide, though less prevalent in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, are far more harmful. Livestock waste—like the so-called “lagoons,” the open-air holding tanks that industry farms use for hog waste—also contributes to air and groundwater pollution. By tracking the whole cycle of livestock production, the report takes into account damaging amounts of carbon dioxide, other pollution and the emissions from transportation (most grain used for feed is shipped long distances).

The livestock industry also pollutes and depletes the water supply. Seventy percent of water use worldwide is attributed to the agriculture industry, of which the livestock sector is an expanding part. And a stunning 93 percent of water depletion—water that won’t be used again—is blamed on the agriculture industry. By comparison, the domestic sector is responsible for only 10 percent of water use and 3 percent of water depletion.

While only a negligible amount of this is used as drinking water for livestock, and for cleaning them and their housing, the amount used for the entire production cycle—feeding, slaughtering, packaging, transporting and tanning—is significant. The report notes that a typical person uses between 8 and 80 gallons of water daily, yet the amount needed to grow a day’s supply of food for that person is about 750 gallons. Even more significant, the report noted, is the extent to which the industry pollutes the water supply, as animal waste often enters the water system in high concentrations.

Lastly, the report addresses biodiversity, the proliferation of species that make up healthy ecosystems. It contends that during the many steps in the animal production chain, the livestock industry contributes to the global loss of biodiversity by damaging ecosystems through improper land use, contributing to climate change, polluting ecosystems with waste, and selective breeding and monoculture.

 The Carbon Hoofprint

 Small Farms vs. Big Operations

On the face of it, “Livestock’s Long Shadow” seems to be an indictment of livestock farming, but a closer look makes it clear that not all livestock farms are created equal. In thinking about these issues, it is helpful to divide livestock farms roughly into two categories: large industrial operations and small farms. Each has its benefits and its drawbacks, and each has its own set of problems.

The term industrial livestock farming generally refers to a collection of farming practices, including Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and Intensive Livestock Operations (ILOs), processes that include high-density containment of largely grain-fed livestock.

As the names suggest, these intensive operations produce tremendous amounts of meat more cost effectively. They generally house animals in small pens not much larger than the animals themselves, or they confine multiple animals in a single pen. These practices produce larger amounts of waste perland area than small farms and often rely on medicines to prevent the spread of disease among their closely contained animals.

These farms are mostly located in developed countries or near urban centers. Livestock farming in these countries depends heavily on transportation to reach markets.

The term “small farm” is relative but may be used to refer to almost any modest operation, from a small organic goat farm in Portland, Maine, to a subsistence farmer with a single goat in Cameroon. Globally, most small farmers are the rural poor who keep livestock for income and for protein, which is chronically lacking in developing-world diets.

Farming in limited spaces and with no knowledge of good practices, these farmers may exacerbate deforestation and taint water supply, though animal waste is less of a problem. Their livestock are more likely to eat fresh, local foliage and grass but may wander freely, making them vulnerable to disease and theft. These farmers are not typically close to markets and must travel to urban areas to sell their livestock. Because they lack access to distribution, markets and safe processing, small farms are a vast untapped resource as a food supply for developing countries.

Good Habits Are Easier for Small Farms

Clearly, small farms in the developing world and giant industrial operations are quite different. While “Livestock’s Long Shadow” briefly discusses poor rural farmers and the difficulties that sector faces, the report focuses largely on industrial farming, perhaps because this sector is rapidly growing. It does not explore the impact of small farmers on the environment, said Montague Demment, director of the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program and professor of ecology at the University of California at Davis.

“You really have to look at this carefully to understand the impact of a goat on a small farm in Kenya compared to a giant feedlot operation in the United States,” Demment said. “One of the greatconcerns is that people will look at this report and say, ‘My goodness, livestock is not something we want in developing countries.’ But the fact is that livestock is a real way out of poverty for many people.”

Organizations like Heifer International base their mission on the opportunity for small livestock operations to help erase poverty. For these organizations, and for the small farmers, success depends on understanding where small livestock farming falls in the big picture and what strategies these farms should employ or avoid as they become established and grow.

Demment is working with the World Bank on a report, to be released this summer, which will try to pin down how small farms interact with the environment. In the meantime, he said, it’s important to remember what organizations like Heifer already know: that livestock operations can improve more than just nutrition and income. If done well, they also encourage small farmers to care for their land and water.

These small farmers are more likely than their larger counterparts to follow sustainable practices, such as using animal manure as fertilizer and planting trees on pastureland to protect water quality and prevent erosion, because the well-being of their herds depends on the well-being of their land. What many consider environmentally friendly is simply a re-creation of the natural order of things, most easily implemented on a small scale.

The Carbon Hoofprint

Meeting in the Middle

Can the best practices of small farms be applied to large-scale farms to make them more environmentally friendly? The FAO report touches on small-farming techniques, like integrated agriculture and integrated pest management, which can be applied to larger operations. The report recommends strategies such as greater efficiency and further intensification of livestock production, strategies that are generally considered hallmarks of industrial farming.

Nine-year-old Layi Jieie herds cows toward the barnnear her home in Ga Tuo Village, China. Her family depends on livestock for food and income.

However, the prescriptions of intensification and greater efficiency send up warning flags for Paul Mueller, professor of crop science at North Carolina State University. Demment and Mueller said for the most part, the report does not fully address the issue. “[An increase in efficiency] plays right into the industrial model,” Mueller said, “because the justification for industrialization is based on economies of scale and efficiency.” To minimize the damage of industrial farming, he said, “some less intensive system, one that is environmentally friendly, is maybe the direction we should be going in.”

Change doesn’t come without a cost. Converting the practices of large-scale farms will be problematic, in large part, because it will raise the prices of meat and animal products at a time when demand is growing.

“There’s been a big increase in production and reduction in consumer cost of meat because of industrialization,” Mueller said. “If you changed some production to integrate more with crop production and reduce the factory feedlot approach, then I think there would probably be less production, and the cost would be higher.”

“But it would be a much more accurate reflection of true cost,” which is an essential consideration for sustainability. And, he added, people in the developed world “can stand to eat a little less meat.” On the flip side, the FAO report identifies some of the problems facing small farms but does not offer many recommendations to make smaller farms more productive and efficient, like large farms, or to make them a safer and more substantial part of the food supply worldwide.

With new data from researchers like Demment, and a closer look at the potential of small farms, it seems that the best practices of both segments of the industry could be useful to reduce the impact of large-scale farming and to encourage the environmentally friendly expansion of small farming.

Mueller agreed. “There certainly is the potential to improve practices on large, industrial-scale operations. Also, a decentralized food production system that relies more heavily on mid- and smallsized farms, and scales processing and distribution to a local and regional market, would be beneficial.”

Which is more important?

“I think we need to do both,” Mueller said.